INTRODUCTION

East Anglia has long been recognised as pivotal to our understanding of the Early Anglo-Saxon period. Situated on the frontier of migrationary movements around the North Sea, it witnessed a complex mixing of peoples, cultural traditions and religious beliefs between the late fourth and sixth centuries. Understanding the nature of what constituted faith to those early people we conveniently term the East Angles is therefore challenging and draws upon a variety of evidence. In particular, it relies on us appreciating that a native Romano-British population need not have been passive, mute bystanders to the new ways brought by immigrant Germanic peoples, but may have made their own particular contributions to create new traditions. Certainly, the inhabitants of what was to become East Anglia were geographically well-placed to absorb or react to the beliefs and material culture of those passing through or choosing to settle within the local landscape. This chapter will therefore attempt to summarise how current scholarly thought interprets pre- Christian Anglo-Saxon belief, or ‘paganism’, and how East Anglia in particular can contribute to such a debate.

Anglo-Saxon paganism has fascinated scholars for decades, yet remains poorly understood. Despite a voluminous literature, the limited primary evidence available is stubbornly problematic for interpreting what the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon settlers to these shores believed, and the extent to which such popular convictions may have articulated themselves in faith systems.